


When I Run Out Of Rope

by hufflepirate



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Confessions, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e16 Prisoners, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Late Night Conversations, Rain, Sharing a Bed, Sleepy Cuddles, Spooning, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 02:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11094708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: Set during 2x16, Prisoners, while Bruce is living with Selina.A thunderstorm wakes Selina and Bruce up in the middle of the night.  She's been thinking about things and he isn't always careful about his words and it's hard to watch him in her world, sometimes, because she's not sure he's ever going to really understand.  They talk things out and sometimes there are things they can't fix, but at least Selina's ready to admit she likes sleeping with her arms around him.  It's not quite realizing she's in love, but maybe it'll keep them alive until the morning, and maybe that's enough.(Suicide tags are here as a content warning, but it's less active suicidal ideation than passive apathy toward being alive.  The reference is to a canonical suicide.)





	When I Run Out Of Rope

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Harry Styles's "Sweet Creature," which was not actually direct inspiration for this fic but came on while I was editing for typos and stuff and I almost died of feels so maybe either do or do not listen to that song while you read this.

Selina woke to a clap of thunder with a heavy weight pressing down against her side. She almost panicked for a moment before she realized it was just Bruce using her as a pillow, his head tucked between her ribcage and her hip and one arm draped loosely over her knees. She thought for a minute that his feet must be hanging off the edge of the bed, but then she realized she was the one who'd twisted around. She could feel the wall behind her, up against her back.

The rain was drumming on the roof, and usually she'd get up to put something under the leaks. Instead, she propped herself up carefully on her elbow, trying not to jostle Bruce too much, and watched him sleep for a while. His face was turned away from her, but she could watch the rise and fall of his breath, slow and steady and perfect.

When he slept peacefully, she was almost jealous of him for the way his long, dark eyelashes looked soft under the dim light from the city outside. When he had nightmares, all she could focus on was the crease between his eyebrows, tense and worried. She had tried to smooth it out with her thumb once, two weeks ago when she was half asleep and not thinking well, but that had woken him up and she'd told herself never to do it again.

She'd gotten her hackles up, telling him he'd been talking in his sleep and she wanted him to shut up. He hadn't been, and he'd looked at her with soft confusion, not awake enough to know what she was talking about. She'd felt silly as she rolled abruptly over to turn her back on him, but he'd apologized like he wasn't upset, and she'd woken up in the morning with him wrapped around her like an extra blanket, his forehead pressed against the back of her neck.

She hoped his face was peaceful now, but she couldn't tell.

They never climbed into bed like this, all tangled up, but they usually ended up this way. Sometimes when they were both still awake, on their own sides of the bed and with a careful empty space between them, she wondered what Bruce would do if she rolled over and cuddled up against his side and stopped pretending. Sometimes she was right on the edge of doing it when she realized he was already asleep and she'd waited too long again.

Other times when they lay awake beside each other, waiting to fall asleep, she curled in on herself because something about it felt dangerous, like some threatening _thing_ was hanging in the air between them, breathing across the edges of her skin.

Bruce sighed in his sleep, and she wondered if she sometimes made the same pained faces and soft little noises that Bruce did when he dreamed about his parents. She wondered if he curled up against her on purpose sometimes, or if he was just wiggly while he was asleep and ended up all mixed up and in her space.

She knew she'd woken up in the morning with her feet tangled up in his and lying over on his side of the bed without ever waking up the night to do it. But she also knew that sometimes she rolled closer to him on purpose when he seemed upset, leaning her forehead into his or weaving their fingers carefully together between their faces without waking him, and she knew that nothing chased her own nightmares away like burying her face in the nape of his neck and just letting herself breathe him in.

Part of her wanted to reach out and run her fingers through his hair, but she curbed the impulse. He might wake up, and she didn't want that. It was better for only one of them to be awake. Everything felt softer that way. Safer. She usually didn't expect things to be soft and safe, but when Bruce was around it felt like a possibility, and even the chance of it was hard to give up in the middle of the night.

12 hours ago she'd wanted to shake the life out of him. 12 hours ago, she'd been turning red and gasping for breath, and she'd had to storm out of the room because she couldn't even figure out what she wanted to scream at him. 12 hours ago, she'd almost sent him home, sick to death of never really knowing if he understood that this wasn't a game, that her life wasn't something he could just _play with_ and then go back to his mansion and wash off of him and eat until he could almost burst.  It had been a month, and the not knowing was just getting worse. 

But 12 hours ago wasn't 3 am, and 12 hours ago, the world wasn't hazy and time didn't stretch and bend and warp the way it did in the middle of the night, and she hadn't felt like they were connected, like something about this might be worth it anyway.

She'd spent weeks living with Bruce last year, and she still questioned those memories. It still didn't feel real that life could be like that, that people could _live_ like that, and she didn't know what to do about it.

It felt real that she and Bruce had shared a bed for the last four and a half weeks. It felt real that she didn't want to give it up. She woke up in the middle of the night almost every night, but she'd done that for as long as she could remember, and there was something _real_ about waking up and not being alone.

There was something scary about it too. There were things girls did with boys in the middle of the night, and a month ago that had been all she could think about, watching him climb into her bed for the first time. She'd wondered what it was like to do things instead of just know about them. She'd wondered what Bruce even _knew_ , stuck in his big mansion alone all the time. She'd thought herself into a tight ball at the edge of the bed, feeling danger breathing around her for the first time, a new kind of danger she was afraid might not be dangerous at all.

Bruce had fallen asleep long before the feeling went away, safely on the other side of the bed.

She still couldn't think about the things she knew straight-on. She could think about little things, like what would happen in the middle of the afternoon if she just kissed him, when they'd been running and her heart was pounding and his cheeks were flushed and his hair was all over the place and she wanted to. She could think about touching him when he turned his back on her to change his shirt and didn't wait long enough for her to stop looking first. She could think, when his lanky limbs got out of control and he elbowed her somewhere he didn't mean to, about what it would be like if he had put his hands on her instead, looking into her with those dark eyes she thought might one day trap hers and never let her go again.  

The danger feeling always came when she thought too hard about it, but it didn't stop her wondering sometimes. How would he react if she slid a hand under his shirt instead of just brushing incidentally against the places it had ridden up in his sleep? What would it feel like to kiss him while they were all tangled up in each other, instead of when he stood stiff and formal by his mansion windows? What would he do if she just came closer and closer and closer until she couldn't anymore, and they were both wide awake and staring and she made it clear she meant something by it?

By now, she knew she'd never risk it. It might become too much, if she pushed on it, and she didn't know what she wanted anyway, not really. She just knew the thought of losing whatever this was that they already had was unbearable and everything else was - confusing.

The thunder had been mostly distant, a low rolling she could almost ignore as she started to drift off again, but then a sudden flash close enough to light up her window spawned a thunderclap that shook the room. It rumbled through her body, catching her heartbeat up with it, and Bruce woke with a start.

"It's ok," she told him as he sat up in front of her, "It's just a storm." She pushed herself up too, leaning on her hand instead of her elbow.

"Were you already awake?" Bruce asked, blushing a little as he realized how close he'd been to her.

"Yeah," she answered, playing it casual and checking the impulse to reach forward and touch him, "I was just thinking about getting up to put something under the leaks in the roof."

"Oh," he said, rolling away from her to scramble to his hands and knees, "Yeah, let me help with that. We have to do that at the mansion sometimes, too."

She raised an eyebrow, "You?"

"Well, usually Alfred," he answered, crawling to the edge of the bed and sliding his feet onto the floor before turning to look at her with a grin, "But I try to be helpful."

"Oh, I know, kid," she said, moving too before he could notice the way that stupid grin had her tangled up with herself. He turned on the lamp by the door and she tried to remember that he didn't mean to rub in his money when he said things like that, but things had been so peaceful when he was asleep and now they weren't again, and that 3-in-the-afternoon feeling was creeping back in instead.

They worked together silently, which was more comfortable now than it had been a month ago. They started with a bucket and a trash can and her one battered pot and pan, and then Bruce rinsed out the empty spaghettio cans left from dinner and put those out, and she started laying out some of her larger rescued tupperware. People threw it out sometimes, when the stuff inside it had gone moldy, but she didn't mind cleaning it out and boiling it until she thought it would be safe to eat out of again.

The longer they moved around each other, never in each other's way, dancing around each other's bodies like they could feel where the other was going, the more she regretted having gotten up at all. Things were better when she could pretend they understood each other, when the ways they were in tune could be all that counted. But she was still stuck on that smile, like there was a joke somewhere she couldn't see, or maybe she just didn't think it was funny.

"So, the fancy manor house leaks," she said finally, after they were all done and double checking to make sure they'd found all the new drips and not just the old ones.

"It _is_ 100 years old," he said, "And it's a lot of roof."

He didn't mention that they always had the money to fix it, but she knew it was true. She didn't mention that she'd never be able to fix hers, but she hoped by now she didn't have to. She wanted to _believe_ that by now she didn't have to.

"A couple of years ago, I didn't have _any_ roof," she said instead, "So I figure this one's good enough."

He nodded, but he had that look in his eyes again that made her want to shake him, like he was pitying instead of understanding. She laughed, trying to keep the bitterness out of it and felt herself fail. "Next time it rains, I oughta make you sleep outside. If you really wanna understand people."

His brow furrowed. He knew she was upset, but she hated that he didn't understand why. "Do you want me to-" he started, willing to go along because he was Bruce Wayne and he never _was_ an asshole on purpose and that was what made it all so difficult.  He wasn't supposed to  _be_ like this. 

"No," she snapped, cutting him off.  "I don't. Just go back to bed. I'm gonna have a snack." She shouldn't, because she tried not to when she was on her own and wanted to make things last. But she couldn't go to bed, either, so she needed to be doing something. She was all tangled up inside, too mad to go back to feeling soft again, but too close to that middle-of-the-night feeling to really give in to the anger. She just felt jumbled up, and frustrated, and tired.

Bruce looked at her for a second, dark eyes concerned, and she couldn't keep eye contact. She couldn't stand him caring about her. Not like this. Not right now. Not with the jumble coming back. Things were better when she and Bruce were moving. Things were better when they were asleep. It was all these in between times that were hard, when she had to notice him not understanding.

She turned the lamp off as she walked past it, so she wouldn't have to watch him go back to bed.  She'd always had good night vision and she could see him anyway, which was almost but not quite disappointing. She leaned against the wall, eating peanut butter off her fingers just to spite him. Bruce wouldn't whine about her getting a little spit in the jar she was sharing with him, but it made a tiny, petty part of her feel better to do it anyway.

Bruce Wayne did all the little life things she had to do all the time and he called them 'helping.' Bruce Wayne could lie in bed and have someone else keep him above water. Bruce Wayne could have clean clothes without buying or washing them. Bruce Wayne couldn't starve to death if he tried. And he'd made her spaghettios for dinner, and he'd followed all her directions, and he hadn't complained about her food or her place or her stuff or the clothes she'd scrounged up for him at the Flea last week when it became clear he'd somehow grown another inch even on street kid rations. 

She couldn't stand him, but she couldn't hate him, either, because she was too busy wondering if she might have been in love with him, if things were different and he weren't so _Bruce Wayne_.

She screwed the lid back on the peanut butter jar, because she couldn't justify a bigger snack to herself, and walked around the bed to crawl in on the other side. Bruce didn't even give her time to turn her back on him, rolling over and reaching out for her wrist with such an earnest look on his face that she couldn't ignore him.

"I said something, didn't I?" he asked. "I said something that upset you. I did this afternoon, too. I'm sorry."

She tugged her wrist out of his grip and he released it, still keeping his eyes locked earnestly on hers so she couldn't break away. "It's nothing, Bruce. Just go to sleep."

"It's _not_ nothing."

"Bruce," she answered, not sure what else to say. He met her eyes, calm and serious and ridiculous, just like always, like nothing could touch him. She played like nothing could touch her, but it wasn't like this. It didn't live in her eyes like it did in his. Being untouchable was just a game and she didn't know what to do with a person who might actually think it was real.

"I'm sorry," he said softly. "I don't ever mean to hurt you."

"I know," she answered, hating the perpetual earnestness in his voice, the way his eyes looked in to hers and told her he was speaking the absolute truth. She almost left it at that. She almost left it, and let him be telling the truth, and closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to look.

But just enough of her anger was left, and she didn't. "But sometimes you do."

"Selina-" he started to reach for her hand and stopped himself at the last moment, putting his hand down on the bed instead and sliding his fingers ever so slightly closer to hers - an offering instead of a demand. "Just tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'll fix it."

And that was the worst damned thing about him. He didn't mean a single thing that hurt her, and he thought he could fix the world, and he couldn't see how trying to fix it all left her out in the cold, like she wasn't even there, like she was a problem he could solve or just look clear through.  She wanted to reach out and brush his fingers with hers, but she couldn't, because it would be like lying to him.  Like refusing to tell him the truth.  She drew her hand farther back, instead.

"You can't." she told him, bluntly, "It's not - it's _everything_. The problem is _everything_. You just - you look at my crappy life and you want to try it out and prove you can handle it and maybe _fix_ it and it's like you don't even remember you get to leave and I don't. I _don't_. So whatever," she continued, " _Help_. You're good at helping. But this is all I've _got_ , and I watch you sometimes and it _hurts_. There's nothing wrong with me and if you're gonna fix something it's gonna have to be the _world_ , and I don't even know how to _do_ that."

Bruce's brow was furrowed, but he wasn't angry, and he wasn't confused. He was just working through it, calm and patient like he had all the time in the world to figure her out, to figure the _world_ out, and that wasn't better, because she didn't have all the time in the world. She was too busy trying to stay alive, and if it came down to it, she'd hang him out to dry and save herself and let him go back to his rich kid house and his rich kid butler, and if it came down to it, he might pick her instead because he still didn't know how _hard_ this was and it just wasn't _fair_.  It wasn't fair watching him try to work the world out like a puzzle when she was always afraid it might grind her up in its teeth and spit her back out.

She shoved him, hard, in the chest, harder than she needed to, and drove half the breath out of him. "Go to _sleep_ Bruce. It's _fine_."

"It's _not_ fine!" he answered, forehead still screwed up so she didn't even know how to read it anymore. "I don't know how to fix the world either, but I'm not gonna just _leave_ you. So I'll just have to-" He cut himself off, biting his lip. "Tell me what to say, Selina. Tell me what _not_ to say."

She rolled over, turning her back on him so she couldn't see his face and she wouldn't have to look at him. "Don't say anything. Or say everything. I don't care. It's not like I'm not used to it. It's not like I didn't always see it. It's not like I didn't live in your house, watching you talk to your _butler_ and go to your fancy _school_. It's not like I didn't _know_."

She heard a rustling sound behind her, and when Bruce spoke again, he sounded closer. "But _I_ didn't know," he said softly, "I swear, I didn't. I mean I knew we were different. I'm not - I'm not _dumb_. But I thought - I mean I wanted -"

"You wanted to give me _stuff_ so it wouldn't be so different," she said, pulling her shoulders forward away from him, in case he thought he could get her to turn around again.  She wasn't going to. "Or you wanted to give me stuff so you could feel better. Or whatever. Or you wanted to give stuff up so we'd be the same, but it doesn't _work_ that way. It doesn't matter. I don't _want_  stuff. I want-" She wanted a lot of things, and some of them _were_  stuff, but some of them were bigger than that. She could hear him breathing, awake and listening and waiting for her to finish and she almost, almost hated him.

"You always act like things are gonna be alright," she said finally, talking too fast, "Like somehow the things you need are just gonna _be_ there. Like of course you and me are just gonna magically have enough, and the leaks in the roof are just gonna have something to drip in and there will be clothes if you sprout up again and medicine if you're sick and places to go if it rains and people to help you if you need them and it's-" she gasped for air, because she'd forgotten to breathe.

"Things go _wrong_ , Bruce. Sometimes there isn't food because there just _isn't_ or one day your friend has a cough and the next thing you know they're _gone_ , or they get shot trying to break into a place that's warm or find the money to go to the doctor and not everybody's as _lucky_ as me, and _stuff goes wrong_. It goes wrong all the time and it doesn't just magically get better. And it's like - nothing is a big deal to you. It's a cute smile and a little joke and of _course_ the roof leaks at your mansion, but I bet it's fixed before it rains again. And some things don't _get_ fixed."  She took a breath, steadying herself. "I'm good at this," she told him, "I'm good at staying alive, and something could go wrong any time and being good at it isn't always enough, and you can't _fix_ that."

Bruce's hand moved in her peripheral vision, reaching for her shoulder, but then he hesitated, pulling back again, and she realized how close he really was, too close and probably looking at her like he _cared._ She was too wound up in her emotions to feel like that was dangerous, but maybe it was. She _knew_ she couldn't let the hurt out like this. She _knew_ she couldn't talk about it. She _knew_ better, because it was _always_ too much, when she let it go, and here she was spouting off anyway. Because Bruce Fucking Wayne had to know everything. Because of _course_ he did.

"People _die_ , Bruce," she spat, "Things go wrong and nobody shows up to save them and the roof caves in instead of getting repaired and the money runs out while they're too sick to get any more and people _die_."

"Selina, my parents got _shot_. I know people die."

"You couldn't die if you _tried_ ," she shot back, the words coming out fast because he'd opened the floodgates, now, and if he got hurt it was his own damned fault and she couldn't bring herself to care anymore. "Somebody's always gonna come for you.  You're _Bruce Wayne_ and they won't let you die.  They won't."  She'd never said his name like that before, like it was ugly, and she hoped it stung and she hoped it didn't.

There was silence between them for long enough that she almost started regretting it, but then Bruce spoke again, his voice soft and so quiet she almost had to strain to hear it.  "When the Order of St. Dumas had me strung up and they were coming at me with that knife," he said, almost reverently, "I have never felt more alive. Not once."

She wanted to say something, or maybe just to scream about how that wasn't what she meant, but he kept going, quiet and reflective, and she didn't.

"And it's because I didn't _care_ ," he continued, "I suddenly realized they were about to kill me and it didn't _matter_. I cared about finding my parents' killer. I cared about figuring out what's going on at Wayne Enterprises and protecting their legacy, but when it came down to me, _just_ me, I - when it was _me_ , I didn't _care_. It was like - suddenly it was _fine_. It was gonna be over. I was gonna just _go_ and maybe I'd see my parents again and if I'd failed at everything I'd meant to do, at least it wasn't gonna be my fault. At least it wasn't gonna be because I hadn't tried."

She didn't know what to say to that, and it wasn't the point, and she just let him keep going, talking it out, like maybe that would make any of it make sense.

"And then I _did_ find him," he continued, voice cracking all of a sudden, like this was harder to talk about than almost dying. "I found Malone and now he's _dead_ , and I didn't even do it. 'Cause he was the same way. I looked at him and I just couldn't - he didn't _care_. He didn't care, and maybe somebody would stop me, if I got a gun and I aimed it at my head, but that doesn't change that he was the same as me. I thought he was gonna be different, but it was like the only thing left was outside him, like maybe if I'd walked in and hired him for a job he'd have gotten up and kept going and killed somebody and come back to his apartment and sat back down and waited for another job, but instead I made him remember and he just _stopped_. He was supposed to be a monster but he was just a person and he looked like part of him was missing. And we were the _same_.  He was just gonna let me kill him, like it didn't even matter, and I just _knew_ it.  We were the  _same_."

She didn't know what to say to that. She hadn't met Matches. She hadn't even really wanted _Bruce_ to meet Matches. Not really. She'd been relieved when Bruce told her he hadn't shot him, but now she wasn't sure.  She was supposed to be angry, but he was starting to scare her instead, and even hating Bruce Wayne didn't feel as bad as being afraid for him.

"I don't know," Bruce said finally, "Maybe I _can't_ die. But maybe I can and I just don't - I don't know how to make that matter. And maybe it would, and maybe I'd want to fight it and maybe somebody'll pull a gun on me and I'll want them not to shoot it, but-"

He cut himself off, clearing his throat. "I don't mean to make you feel like I'm taking you for granted," he said instead, firmly and certainly. "I'm grateful, really, and I'll try to do better. But I'm not - I know things don't always work out. And I promise I'll learn the rest. I mean it. I'm in it for the long haul. Me and you. And yeah. I'll have to go home some day, because Wayne Enterprises is my responsibility, and I have to clean it up. But that doesn't - it's not because I don't want to see the truth. It's _not_. But I don't know how to be worried when I can't-"

He put a hand on her shoulder, and she rolled over to face him quickly, too quickly for him to finish the sentence. They were too close together, and he fell silent as he scooted back and made room for her to turn in. She was vaguely aware that she'd had words in her head before she rolled over, but now she was looking him in the eye and she'd never seen him look sad like this before, not like _this_ , and she wondered if it had always been there and she just hadn't seen it.  The fear settled into her stomach like she'd been punched there.

"I'm trying, Selina," he said, almost whispering and so close she could feel his breath as he talked, "I promise I am. And I'll try not to forget so much."

She grabbed his hand. "Bruce Wayne, if you give up on life, I'm gonna kill you myself, just for the betrayal." That wasn't what she meant, but maybe it was, and either way she'd said it, because it felt like the part of all of this that mattered most.

He didn't smile, because he had a way of taking in her sarcasm with an absolute seriousness that always made her feel things she couldn't explain. Instead, he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers. "Ok." She didn't know if it was ok he'd stay alive or ok he'd let the original conversation go or just ok he'd heard her.

On impulse, she leaned forward those extra few inches and kissed him on the lips, quick and hurried, because it was the only way she could think of to tell him she meant it. "Ok," she agreed, pulling away and pressing their foreheads together again.  Her heart beat raggedly in her chest and she didn't want him to know how afraid she felt. "Now go back to sleep," she said, trying not to sound afraid, "I told you. It's fine. You are who you are. And I _am_ planning to keep you around."

His eyes had flickered shut when she kissed him, but they opened again, looking steadily into hers for a minute like he was looking for something.  He wasn't trying to work her out this time, just _looking_ , and she reached out and shoved him again, gently this time, when she couldn't stand it anymore. Things were so hard between them sometimes she thought she might explode, but if he kept looking at her like this, she'd have to admit she was never going to let him go, and she'd have to figure out what that meant. "Roll over, kid, I wanna cuddle."

He raised an eyebrow, a soft smile pulling at the edges of his mouth, but then ducked his head down and followed directions, turning around carefully without getting any farther away from her. She leaned forward, burying her face against the back of his neck. He wiggled backward into her, and she wrapped an arm around him to pull him closer.

After a moment, he took her hand in one of his, pulling it gently upward so he could press it against the center of his chest, right next to his heart, and lay his other hand over it too. That was good. Maybe it would remind him that he was supposed to be alive. Maybe it would remind him that she wanted him to stay that way. Maybe it would remind him that not everybody got to pick whether they lived or died. Or maybe they'd just sleep, and in the morning they'd do it all over again and she'd be mad and frustrated and he'd learn a little, but not fast enough, and she'd crawl back into him at night like breathing together could be enough.

She could feel him breathing against her, still awake, and she tried to slow her breath, to help his body calm itself down against hers. She was stronger than he was, and he was a lot more tired out by the life they were living together, and if they both had a lot on their minds, it wasn't enough to balance that out. She felt his muscles relaxing, little by little, and his breath growing slower and it was only after he was all the way asleep that she could let herself relax too, trusting their hearts to keep each other beating and their lungs to keep each other breathing, trusting herself not to be alone in the morning and Bruce to stay alive in her arms like he was supposed to.  She'd worry about tomorrow when it got here.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm several episodes past this now, but I'm still not quite done with Season 2 and haven't seen Season 3. I can think of no compelling reason people would post spoilers in the comment section but just in case, please don't?


End file.
